Software Six Sigma (S³) - Decisions Based on Data

Many practitioners feel statistical process control cannot be meaningfully
applied to software projects.  Our initiative clearly demonstrates that they
are wrong.

What is Software Six Sigma (S³)?

Years of software development characterized by missed schedules, cost over
runs, burnt-out engineers, poor quality products, made it imperative to find a better way to produce software products.

While it is usually helpful to launch process improvement programs, many
such programs get bogged down in detail.  They either address the wrong root
cause or they keep beating on the same solutions wondering why things don't
improve.

Software Six Sigma (S³) uses the traditional Six Sigma tools and applies
them uniquely to the software world to understand process behavior and to
bring stability, predictability, and improvement to software processes.  The emphasis is on the use of statistical process control (SPC) methods.

The benefits of SPC have been so evident in manufacturing that it would be
foolish to ignore their potential for improving software products and
processes. S³ allows the software organization to realize these benefits

What will S³ give you?

S3 will demonstrate how a software organization can measure and analyze
characteristics of software products and processes using SPC, so that the
performance of activities that produce the products can be:

    managed,
    predicted,
    controlled,
    and improved to achieve business and technical goals.

Traditional software measurement and analysis methods, those that provide
status at a point in time and compare against the "plan", are not sufficient for determining past performance or for predicting process performance.

Focus with S³ is toward acquisition of quantitative information and the use
of SPC methods to help identify the problems and opportunities present in
the process.  Then the organization can confidently use the data to control
and predict the process behavior and guide the improvement activities -
Decisions based on data.